I start this article with two facts about myself: I am not very fond of cooking (although when I cook I do it well) but I love to eat. I have always had a balanced diet, but lately laziness coupled with food delivery platforms has not made a good team when it comes to healthy choices. Especially since we came back from Bali I have actually eaten a lot of crap … This has all contributed to one thought: I want to change my food lifestyle.

This is not to say that I am going to adopt a Paleo, Vegan, Vegetarian or other diet. I believe in a balanced diet, but undoubtedly there are things I want to change, both for my health and the environmental issues that are associated with it. But the truth is that this change is not easy for me. First because I am not a fan of cooking and as such it is not so appealing to me to look for recipes, new ingredients, etc. Second, because it is hard for me to orient myself through so much information and filter out what is true and what may not be.

It was in this context that I saw Game Changers. This is a Netflix documentary produced by James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar), Jackie Chan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger that focuses on the impact of a plant-based diet on some high-competition athletes. Since I’ve been doing a lot of sport for several years, I was curious to know what impact this lifestyle would have on athletes like these. And yes, the message this documentary gives is that this diet really has many health and performance benefits especially for these athletes.

At first glance, I liked the documentary. It seemed to me to be very enlightening, it explains most things simply and, something that also pleased me was the fact that they included the references of the scientific articles that are mentioned throughout the film and which support the narrated facts. But! The truth is that this documentary is a true advertisement for this type of diet, showing only the pretty and positive version of it (or were not the vegetarian / vegan producers themselves, one of them owning such a company).

At the level of scientific rigor, by the way, there are some obvious flaws (such as drawing conclusions from experiments with only three people). Regarding the scientific articles that are mentioned throughout the documentary I can not say much, unless I have read some articles here on the Internet that said they are somewhat dubious. Anyway, it’s worth what it’s worth.

I know this diet has a lot of benefits, many of them mentioned in the documentary, but we have to be critical about it. The supplements that many athletes have to take are not mentioned because their diet is not enough, for example. And the cases of anemia that often arise in people who have adopted vegetarianism / veganism. And probably many other things that I’m not aware of either.

All in all, it’s a good documentary to look at with critical eyes. Seeing and knowing that what they show is a vegetable-based dietary ad and that it has many benefits, but not everything they count is as true as that. No doubt it has made me rethink my options and pay more attention to certain choices, but once again I do not intend to become a vegetarian full time. Only a lot more than I am right now 🙂

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